This Week in London – Charles I’s ‘Royal Collection’ on show; John Constable; and, 18th century satire…

January 25, 2018

• A landmark exhibition which reunites one of the most extraordinary art collections ever assembled opens in the main galleries of the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly this Saturday. Presented in partnership with the Royal Collection Trust, Charles I: King and Collector features about 150 of the most important of the works collected by King Charles I during his reign, spanning the period from 1600 to 1649. They are among 1,500 paintings and 500 sculptures he collected prior to his execution in 1649, after which the collection was offered for sale and dispersed across Europe. Many of the works were retrieved by King Charles II during the Restoration but others now form the core of collections at institutions such as the Musée du Louvre and the Museo Nacional del Prado. Among those on show in this exhibition, which includes more than 90 works borrowed from the Royal Collection, are several monumental portraits of the king and his family by Anthony van Dyck as well as the artist’s most celebrated portrait of the king, Charles I (‘Le Roi a la chasse’) (pictured), which returns to England for the first time since the 17th century. Other works include Peter Paul Rubens’ Minerva Protects Pax From Mars (‘Peace and War’) – this was commissioned by Charles and painted between 1629-30, Andrea Mantegna’s series, The Triumph of Caesar (c1484-92), and Titian’s Supper at Emmaus (c1530) while artists including Correggio, Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, Albrecht Durer, Hans Holbein the Younger and Pieter Bruegel the Elder are also represented. The exhibition also shows off the celebrated Mortlake tapestries depicting Raphael’s Acts of the Apostles (c1631-40) and paintings, statuettes, miniatures and drawings once kept in the Cabinet at Whitehall Palace. Runs until 15th April. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.royalacademy.org.uk.

• John Constable’s oil sketch, Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, 1829–31, is one of 10 works which have gone on display at the Guildhall Art Gallery as part of its Victorian Landscapes exhibition. The painting takes centre-stage in the display in the gallery’s Temple Room; other works on show include John Brett’s Echoes of a Far-Off Storm (1890); Edward William Cooke’s Triassic Cliffs, Blue Anchor, North Somerset (1866), and Benjamin Williams Leader’s The Church at Betwys-y-Coed (1863). The paintings can be seen until early May. For more, follow this link.

• Eighteenth century satire portrayed on ceramics and prints is the subject of a new free display at the British Museum.Pots with Attitude: British Satire on Ceramics, 1760-1830 features some 80 objects, some of which have not been on show for decades, including mugs and jugs (which make up the bulk of the items on show) as well as items like a cotton handkerchief printed with the “Peterloo Massacre” of 1819 and a rather grisly folding fan showing hidden profiles of executed French sovereigns (1794). Other objects show off copies of prints by satirists such as James Gillray and Charles Williams, with one of the latter’s showing a colossal Napoleon about to cross the Channel into England but prevented from doing so by a pint-sized, sword-carrying John Bull, who has sliced off his toes and is telling him, ‘Paws off, Pompey’ – the comment a reference to a lap-dog known as Pompey the Little who was the hero of a popular novel at the time. The display can be seen in Room 90a, Prints and Drawings Gallery, until 13th March. For more, see www.britishmuseum.org.